And everything got real slow like a gunshot in the movies
by My Leather Couch
Summary: Irwin receives an invitation, and recalls that history is about making moves . . . or not making them. Irwin/Dakin past implied. Cross-posted from AO3.


**A/N: Title taken from Regina Spektor's "Daniel Cowman.**

* * *

_And everything got real slow like a gunshot in the movies_

**.,oO8Oo,.**

He receives the invitation on a Tuesday.

He retrieves it unwittingly with the rest of the morning mail that has been stuffed through his letter box, and carelessly sets the lot down on his kitchen table next to books about Nicholas II, his latest idea for the television program. It sits buried under the bills, in between pages of the post, waiting patiently through a phone call and two rounds of coffee before Irwin notices it. He places the bills in his napkin holder so as not to forget them, and then picks up the paper.

The heavy, cream-colored envelope falls out from where it had been inserted between the classifieds and the comics. It glances off the saucer of his coffee cup before slapping itself down on the floor.

He curses, and leans irritably over the side of his wheelchair, long fingers brushing at the floor until he manages to snag a corner. He straightens and brings the envelope up to his face, adjusting his glasses from whence they slid askew.

There are a few moments that he takes to frown at the name scrawled on the back. It's addressed to him all right—_Mr. Tom Irwin_, no mistake there— but it appears to be in his own handwriting.

Curious, he turns the envelope over, slits it open, and removes the pale blue card.

The mere sight of the gold gilded Oxford crest is enough to make his stomach drop.

By the time the morning car comes to give him a lift to the studio, the invitation has made its way into the rubbish bin, unopened.

**.,oO8Oo,.**

He writes up a sensational segment on Rasputin and the fall of the Russian Tzar and presents the draft to his supervisors. They love it immediately, and so too will his viewers. It's good. And if he can keep this up at a steady enough pace, he thinks he might be looking at a comfortable retirement.

It seems silly, but it has put him in a chipper mood, and so he's caught off guard when Don rings him around lunchtime.

_"Sir."_

And, yes, he's surprised, because there's only one person who bothers to call and addresses him only as "sir" in those pouty public-school tones.

"Hello, Don. What can I do for you?" Of all the boys from Culter's, Donald Scripps was the only one who kept in touch after . . . well, _after_. It was primarily a utilitarian, business-based communication: originally, Don had been writing a piece for the student-run paper, and Tom was willing to give some insight on the local political climate. After that, it was still fairly professional: Don wanted writing advice, Don needed this, needed that, had exhausted all other resources and maybe, possibly would Irwin have something useful?

And of course he did, he always did; at least, he tried. And perhaps because Irwin was so obliging, or perhaps because Scripps was the only one who had managed to see through the bullshit from day one, the business talk was eventually interspersed with casually related things: how Scripps was doing, how the others were doing.

In their lively, but infrequent conversations, Scripps usually took care not to mention Dakin, and Irwin never brought him up either; he was the proverbial elephant in the room. Irwin had always wonder about that, this tacit consideration on Scripps' part; did he refrain from mentioning Dakin because they were no longer mates?

(Or did he know something, somehow?)

_"Are you going, then?"_

"Where?" Irwin asks around a mouthful of egg salad.

_"To the big bloody graduation bonanza. I assume you got your invitation."_

"I thought you weren't due till this December?" Irwin says, confused (but more confused that Don would invite him anywhere publically; they were most comfortable, after all, over the phone or email).

_"I'm not."_A pause. _"You didn't get it?"_

"Don, what are you on about?"

_"I saw him write your name on one,"_ Don was saying, and it wasn't like him to sound chagrined, but the tone was there. _"Don't you check your post?"_

Irwin goes quiet for a moment, mind ticking through his options until he comes up with the only thing that makes sense. He thinks of the blue card, now buried under three days-worth junk mail and a scrapped draft. _Ah_.

"Dakin," he says at last.

_"Stu,"_ Don says, and it's not really a correction but more a reminder that the one they are both talking about has a more familiar address, one that Irwin has never permitted himself to use, even in his own head. Dakin (purposefully the surname) was the one subject they'd both studiously avoided; now, it seemed he was coming out of the woodwork.

"I did—get an invite," Irwin says after another awkward pause. He sets down his egg-salad sandwich, appetite suddenly absent. "I tossed it."

On the other side of the line, there is a huff that sounds suspiciously like a laugh. _"What the bloody hell for?"_

And suddenly, sitting there in his cozy office surrounded by stacks of papers and books and references, Irwin knows. Don was in on it. He'd been in on it the whole time.

_What a fool._

"It's not like you to be meddlesome, Don." Irwin decides that adopting his chiding teacher tone might be useful, if not appropriate, considering the situation.

_"But it is like you to be a pansy about it,"_ Don shoots back, and Irwin is transported immediately back to Hector's classroom, to their discussion of the Holocaust, the way Don's expression had settled into that wry, slightly disappointed look. It was a look of cleverness, but not self-important cleverness that the others (especially Dakin) toted about; Don's expression made no bones about how clever it was, but was simply consternated at the fact that it was forced to come out of its shell.

It was this self-possession that had nothing to do with pompousness that caused Irwin to let the personal injury slide and keep his ear pressed against the phone instead of hanging up right then and there.

_"It's just an invitation,"_ Don says softly when Irwin fails to reply_. "And it's not just for Stu; party's for Posner, as well—which I guess you'd know if you had read the invite. They've got quite chummy over the years; decided to throw their celebration together, as a farewell type thing."_

The word _chummy_ echoed in his skull, and he shook his head as if to dislodge it. Who knew? Dakin and Posner being chummy. "Why are you trying to convince me to go?" Irwin asks suddenly, shrewdly.

There is a sigh, long-suffering_. "Because Stu invited you, and he_**_asked_**_me about it—whether or not he should—and I said 'yeah, sure, why not?' because it's just a sodding party and he'd like it if you had the decency to pop in."_

Irwin looked down at himself, his button-down blue shirt, the stray crumb or two on his tie, his legs in their stirrups of the wheelchair. "I very much doubt that," he muttered.

_"It's next Saturday. I'm going. Hell, I can give you a lift if you need. My flat-mate's got a station-wagon; boot's big enough for your chair, I reckon. Think about it."_

Irwin doesn't get a chance to say anything else before he rung off.

**.,oO8Oo,.**

It isn't as if he doesn't think about it. Actually, to be completely honest, he thinks about it more than he should. It sort of sneaks up on him—when he is pouring coffee, visiting the library, rolling through the street. The memory pops up at odd and inopportune moments, crowding around his head, making him pause in mid-movement:

_'Anybody else, I'd say we could have a drink.'_

It was a cliché, _such a cliché._He hated it.

Days like that, he was secretly glad for the motorcycle accident. The wheelchair had been a pain and a half to get used to—and four years later, he couldn't really say that he'd grown attached to it. But he made due. The wheelchair came in handy for tellie anyway—gave him more authority, more sincerity, his supervisors said. He didn't need full use of his legs to be clever. And he could still stand, just not for very long, and with putting as little weight as possible on his bad leg. He wasn't derelict. He had done well for himself. He had retrained his body to get along fine without using his legs, and he retrained his mind to push out Dakin and most of his memories of Culter's.

But there are times. Oh, yes: there are times.

He isn't depressed, per se. He knows what depression feels like, and this definitely isn't it. He derives a great deal of joy from life, from his work. He is, on the whole, very content; what pierces this contentedness is not melancholia, but a fleeting ache— sharp, but quick to fade. A rapid needle jab, as in a doctor's surgery.

It doesn't keep him up nights; but it sometimes makes his showers longer than they ought to be.

**.,oO8Oo,.**

The rubbish-collector comes on Thursdays. He doesn't have to roll his bin out to the curb—there is an older widow next door that's happy to do it for him—but he empties all the smaller bins in his house. He does so, methodically.

That Thursday morning, Irwin sips his coffee and listens to the rumble of the truck outside, staring intently at the (now slightly bent) blue card tucked into his napkin-holder.

He stares and thinks about his life, his thirty-something-odd years. He thinks about his accomplishments and accolades, how they boosted his self-esteem, but were somehow never really enough. He thinks about his past lovers, few and far between. He thinks about his weekly physical therapy sessions, and the dull ache in his bad leg.

He thinks about Dakin; the way Dakin had looked at him that day, before the accident; the way Dakin hadn't looked at him during Hector's funeral.

It feels stupid—it feels _really_stupid. But he goes out and purchases a bottle of champagne anyway, has one of his suits dry-cleaned, and calls Don to ask if the offer for a ride is still up.

_"Of course,"_ laughs Don over the phone. _"Of course."_

**.,oO8Oo,.**

The days until that Saturday march towards him relentlessly, dully, torturously. He can feel the edges of his reality going in and out of focus with the rising and falling tide of his nerves. Sometimes he is sharp and with it, usually in the early morning while he drank more coffee than was really healthy. In the afternoons, however, everything feels sticky and laggard. It's like waiting for a sentencing. He'd felt the same thing whilst awaiting his letter from Oxford.

What a disappointment that had been.

It is Friday—fucking _Friday_—when Posner rings.

"BBC, Tom Irwin speaking."

_"Don't come."_

He's stunned, for a brief second, both by the direct and harsh delivery and by the timbre of the voice, familiar but changed.

"Pardon?"

_"Don't come to the party."_ The speaker he recognizes, still has that same sing-song voice, but it has grown deeper, matured_. "I know that Stuart sent you an invitation, and I'm inviting you not to come."_

Irwin fiddles with a pen on his desk. His palms have grown sweaty. "May I ask why?"

_"Do you know what I studied?"_

Presumptuous, to think he would recognize the voice without an introduction, but pointless, because he does. "Literature," he replies automatically; then, "Scripps told me you were reading literature."

_"Yes,"_ came the prim reply, and he remembered that too. _"Did he tell you that I've met someone?"_

"No, he didn't."

_"Stuart met someone, too. Not me, and not a girl, but someone. Don't come and spoil it for him."_

There is a beat of silence wherein Irwin drinks this information in and lets it penetrate the gyri of his brain. Dakin had met someone. Of course he had. He was an impossible flirt when Irwin knew him; that, if anything, he had never expected to change. But the confirmation that Dakin was actively seeing someone, that he was _someone's_ . . . it left a sourness in Irwin's mouth. Bitter and cold, like day-old coffee.

"Posner, I—"

_"He's good, sir. He's very good. He's done stupendously, in fact—and now we're both graduating, and we're both looking forward to our futures, and we don't need reminders of the past—neither of us."_

"I'm not sure I understand."

The response was quick. _"But you do."_

"Posner, I only wanted to wish you both well. I'm not going to try anything."

There is an aggravated, slightly prissy huff. _"You don't have to try anything, sir, because anything will happen all on its own. I'm asking you to not give anything a chance."_

He should back down now, he knows. He should leave it at that, bid Posner good day and hang up; but something in him rebels. He feels, for the first time in a very long time, somewhat angry. "Why should it be any of your business?"

_"Because, after these four years and a lot of work, Stuart and I are actually friends now, and I'd like it to stay that way." _

There is a knock at Irwin's door, and he looks up to see one of the show's producers with a file in hand. Irwin tries not to look like a deer caught in the headlights and turns his attention back to the phone.

"I see."

_"I hope so."_

"Good bye, then, Posner. Best of luck to you."

_"Good bye, sir."_

He listens to Posner ring off before setting the phone down on its receiver and looking up, plastering on his best patient smile.

**.,oO8Oo,.**

When Don comes by to pick him up on Saturday, Irwin greets him at the door and informs him that he's not going.

Don's expression doesn't change. He asks why, but Irwin can do little else but shake his head and push the bottle of champagne into Don's hands.

Irwin watches Don drive away, and pretends that he doesn't feel the drop in his stomach. He closes the door, wheels around, and heads back into his study where he was working on another segment for the program. He immerses himself again in his books, his motes of dust, in arbitration and ambivalence. He contemplates the history that has been written down before him, only so he doesn't have to contemplate his own.

He buries the pale blue card at the bottom of a desk drawer and forgets about it.

**.,oO8Oo,.**

_And then he sat back down another two times in the row._


End file.
